M Gallery, CICA Museum
May 3 -7, 2023
2023.05.03 – 07
[FTCTMSTM]
For some reason, I have always compartmentalized my identity; perhaps it has to do with the displacement of my upbringing. Five days before my twelfth birthday, I lost my older brother to leukemia, and grief and I became inseparable. And perhaps that’s when my hypersensitivity began — to the perils of our curated circles and the carelessness of words and actions — so my tendency was to stay silent. Because the last thing I’d want is to contribute to unthought out clutter that can easily accumulate and hurt. But at the same time, why remain quiet, when there is still so much to say, even if it’s only a whisper. Shifting from the performative to the reflective informs a lot of my current works that address reconciliation of self to human/other/technology. I stumbled upon new media art that allowed a minimality and nimbleness I sought after and began gathering my texts, poems, sound, found, and video to create site-specific installations often structured in (three) movements: deconstructed, isolated, remixed and/or improvised. If the rest of the world is mostly living in a performative state, then what is a performance? When (we)they are pretending, in truth, giving the truest version in fiction, is merely existing a performance? By reclaiming a new hybrid hyphenate space through encouraging the blending of (live and recorded) poetic micro plays, (non)screen based audio visual language, we human (a)performance makers, by way of equitable and accessible methodologies, may design again and direct a new, new scene (softly, kindly, gently, slowly…).
Debbie Y.J. Lin 林晏如 is an East Asian Canadian Californian interdisciplinary artist interested in site specific work focused on the architecture of human sound and languages. In a bilingual Mandarin and English household, she began classical piano at age four, and grew up observing her grandparents who were self-taught artists (designer + photographer). Having performed as a vocalist at the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Hollywood Bowl, and Carnegie Hall, she experiments with time-based live improvised vocalization/sound and pre-composed video/sound to transcribe the transience of thought through the lens of Faith and technology. Her works have been exhibited during Berlin Art week, at art Nou, Loop Barcelona, Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe, Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia Spain, 825 Gallery and Neutra Institute Gallery & Museum in Los Angeles, Equity Gallery in New York, A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, and the Contemporary and Digital Art Fair. She graduated cum laude from UCLA with a B.A in Music Education, summa cum laude from Berklee College of Music with a M.M in Music Production and Technology and received her M.A. in Media Studies from The New School of Public Engagement in New York. In 2021, she was the
recipient of the California Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship Award. Often working within marginalized parameters and navigating embedded structures of discrimination, it is her lifelong mission to cultivate an environment most conducive to equitable creative expressions. She is the founder and co-curator of Video Sound Archive, a member of SAG-AFTRA, UBCP/ACTRA and League of Canadian Poets and spends most of her time creating and working to restructure the historically and systemically erased voices as an independent director, consulting producer, screen/voice/video/sound/spoken word artist and transdisciplinary arts and music educator.
